The Walks (2017)

The Walks (2017) spans Chicago’s Historic Parks and Boulevard System* and part of the lakefront. Walking, allowed the artist to contemplate a range of issues including the immediate urban context, larger concepts of urbanity, the manner in which green spaces connect to the broader territory and transitory areas in a contemporary society.

Urban planning and rules of compliance have determined the delineations illustrated via sidewalks, roads and fences in the imagery, demarcating different zones and their varying purposes. These linear manipulations of the urban landscape have served to either keep people out or moving, devices that decisively affect the flow of pedestrians.

The Walks amassed a large volume of fragmented imagery by employing the automatic timer of the camera, set to predetermined intervals. The method provided a mode of distancing Cebra from the image making. Ultimately, the artist worked in tandem with the camera, allowing elements of chance to creep in and permitting the unexpected.

The multitude of cards stacked and sorted by walk (A, B, C or D), allow for a non-sequential experience of the journeys in the palm of a hand. The cards can be jumbled, skipped over, shuffled and rearranged, this chance operation grants the viewer a certain freedom of experience.

Quotidian Metropolis II (2016)

Part II of Quotidian Metropolis is a series of digital photographic works.The series (2016) and recent exhibition (2017 - click here for the details) Quotidian Metropolis, offers contemplation on present-day metropolitan centers and how they must adapt to current stimuli and simultaneously grapple with their past identities. The images investigate themes of pedestrian transience and cultural identity in man-made environments. The areas were physically surveyed by Céleste Cebra as a meditation upon the multitude of liminal and transitory spaces. The works also inspect building façades as markers of an area’s identity and signifier of a structure’s purpose.

Well-established cities and towns offer fascinating records of times past and bear the visible traces of previous and present inhabitants. Situated in the contemporary world these are places where the quotidian collides with the historical.

The exhibition was displayed in two parts, the first comprised of the medium format film photographs* (in the Foyer Gallery) and the second, of the digital photographic works (in the Main Gallery). Cebra delves into the former's process here. Featured below are a few select works of the twenty-three exhibited.

Quotidian Metropolis I (2016)

Part I of Quotidian Metropolis is a series of analogue medium format photographs.

The series (2016) and exhibition (2017 - click here for the details) Quotidian Metropolis, offers contemplation on present-day metropolitan centres and how they must adapt to current stimuli and simultaneously grapple with their past identities. The images investigate themes of pedestrian transience and cultural identity in man-made environments. The areas were physically surveyed by Céleste Cebra as a meditation upon the multitude of liminal and transitory spaces. The works also inspect building façades as markers of an area’s identity and signifier of a structure’s purpose.

Well-established cities and towns offer fascinating records of times past and bear the visible traces of previous and present inhabitants. Situated in the contemporary world these are places where the quotidian collides with the historical.

The exhibition was displayed in two parts, the first comprised of the medium format film photographs* (in the Foyer Gallery) and the second, of the digital photographic works (in the Main Gallery). Cebra delves into the former's process here. Featured below are a few select works of the twenty-three exhibited.

Interstitial Interiors (2015)

The Interstitial Interiors series explores the movement of people through institutional transitory spaces and the oddity of such spaces when void of human presence. Through an investigation of transience, liminality, flow, the feeling transitional zones may evoke and the ritual of the pedestrian commute in structured interiors, Cebra developed the still interior photographs.